On 28th June the Year 13 Chemistry class went to see the University of Canterbury’s new Ernest Rutherford Building to learn about Spectroscopy.

The different methods we looked at were NMR, Infrared, Mass spec and X-ray crystallography.

It was fascinating to hear from scientists working at UC about the processes of analysing and identifying different compositions of substances, as we had at the time only just touched on learning how to do it ourselves. We already knew how to separate substances using IR Spectroscopy and NMR, but we had the opportunity to also hear about Mass Spectroscopy and also X-Ray Crystallography, which is a subject we won’t have the chance to investigate fully until we continue Chemistry at university. This was an informative and interesting mini-field trip for our class, especially because we also got to have a look at the new UC science blocks too.

- Olivia Silby